Experts in Greece reassured the public on Tuesday that there are no indications of a Greek variant of the Covid-19 virus, according to greekreporter.com.
There is nothing to indicate a Greek origin mutation, according to Gkikas Magiorkinis and National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Rector Thanos Dimopoulos, both of whom are professors at the NKUA School of Medicine.
On Monday, the President of the National Vaccination Committee, Maria Theodoridou, expressed concern for any mutated strain, as reports suggested that such a virus mainly existed in the center of Athens. Some reports called it the “Athenian variant.”
“Regarding the ‘Athenian variant’ that exists in the center of Athens, one cannot say that it does not cause concern. There are, however, special observation and recording systems, and specialist geneticists and infectious disease specialists will monitor its evolution and let us hope that it will be very limited,” Theodoridou underlined.
However, the two professors on Tuesday were more reassuring. They pointed out that the naming of novel coronavirus variants is a complex process, given that the creation of mutations is extremely frequent in RNA viruses, even those with correction mechanisms like Covid-19.
When this process of mutation leads to a strain that spreads in the population and is sufficiently different, either through chance or because it has some advantage, this creates a new lineage that is named as a variant and which in the past was named after the location where it was first detected.
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